OK, I admit it, I’m becoming obsessed with what is happening – or not happening – in Victoria. And I mean Victoria, Australia, not the capital of British Columbia, as the advertising bot on our podcast provider seems to think.Apologies if last week’s podcast started with a noisy ad for Canadian radio. This is what happens when artificial intelligence turns out to be not as smart as it thinks it is.No, I’m talking about our Victoria where I get a strong sense that strata there is in crisis – and many of the residents don’t even know it while the politicians and the media don't care.If being neglected, taken for granted and exploited is all you’ve ever known, then you think it’s the norm.This also makes me think it’s time our politicians standardised some strata laws. There is no reason why they should be different from state to state.If the way Queensland handles, say, strata committee elections, works better that how Victoria and NSW do it, then everyone should do it the way they do in the sunshine state.There are so many other ways we could standardise strata laws – if only we weren’t all so damned parochial – and I canvass a few of them in the second part of the podcast.And I want you to tell me what laws you think should be standardised – even if you don’t care which version we use – by writing to mail@flatchat.com.au with “standard laws” in the subject line.TRANSCRIPT IN FULLIt's Sunday morning... Sue is still in Europe; she's in Paris, for the next few days. I've just watched the Socceroos get knocked out of the World Cup by Argentina (which, let's face it, it would have been more of a surprise if that hadn't happened). Argentina is one of the favourites for the competition.We better get on with the show. A couple of things I want to talk about. One of them is the state of play in Victoria; we're seeing reports... It's pretty alarming there. So I want to talk about that.And I want to talk about (while we're looking at other states), what laws could we try to standardise across the states, just to avoid some of the confusion? That's coming up.I'm Jimmy Thomson, I write the Flat Chat column for the Australian Financial Review. And this is the Flat Chat Wrap.[MUSIC]JimmyNow, before Victorian listeners turn off (because we might be criticising Victoria), and New South Wales listeners turn off (because we're not talking about you)...There's something happening in Victoria that affects all of us.My attention was drawn last week, to a story on ABC Radio, about how the cladding remediation programme in Victoria, has exposed (literally), some serious building defects that have been neglected and means that some buildings are literally rotting from the inside-out.Apart from the issue of cladding (which they're dealing with in their own way); and this is flammable cladding, that everybody wants to have off their buildings.So they're ripping off the panelling there and they're finding that the structure of some buildings, especially older ones, are absolutely rotten from the inside.Now this has been caused; normally by water leaks in the building, which means the buildings' have had defects that have not been fixed.Okay.At the same time, I got a copy of an open letter
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Recorded by Jimmy Thomson & Sue Williams; Transcribed by Otter.ai.
Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites.
